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Avalon
The Avalon phase of TMP2 concerns the settlement of the natural lunar and planetary bodies of the solar system, with the Moon and Mars leading in development priority as other bodies in the solar system represent far greater challenges to settlement based on distance and environment. However, should settlement beyond these initial two bodies prove practical they will likely employ some variation of the same settlement strategy, with the addition of adaptations to more extreme conditions or perhaps some attempts as geoengineering. In the original TMP Avalon was concerned primarily with the settlement of the Earth’s Moon, following on the settlement of near-Earth orbit in the Asgard phase. In TMP2 we consider Avalon to parallel Asgard and to be expanded in scope to include Mars along with lunar and planetary settlement in general based on their sharing a common settlement strategy and habitat technology. However, resource overhead in dealing with the gravity of these bodies will tend to make them less attractive for initial settlement than orbital locations, depending, of course, on how challenging the human adaptation to microgravity ultimately proves to be. Still, the immediate availability of resources on lunar and planetary bodies will always be extremely compelling and their settlement, over the long-term, is probably inevitable. Visions of Settlements Marshal Savage’s vision of lunar settlement was based on the classic –virtually clichéd– notion of vast crater-filling transparent domed habitats housing a verdant Earth-like environment. Though as seemingly implausible as the retro-SciFi it paralleled, this was predicated on the use of the same water-filled pneumatic membrane hull concept as he proposed for the orbital habitats of Asgard. And the problem with this idea is essentially the same; Savage offered no explanation for how such structures would be fabricated and at present there is no known way to do it on such vast scales. Complicating things further was the question of the effects of even reduced gravity and the tremendous static hydropressures that would ultimately build up at the perimeter of such vast domes when open flow through the hull was necessary for algae cultivation. As we will detail, TMP2’s proposed solution to these issues is similar to its solution for the hull systems of Asgard; virtual rather than actual transparency. Interestingly, Asgard was the only part of the original TMP were Marshal Savage described in some detail the design of individual personal homes, envisioning a kind of peripheral suburban dwelling option in addition to the use of large primary community habitats. This is probably less practical than even Savage thought it to be but this proposed design, based on an excavated habitat surrounding a membrane-dome-enclosed atrium, is quite prescient –perhaps more so than his vision for larger structures– and could have readily formed the basis of land-based demonstration communities on Earth. Though this concept too shares the same issues with the membrane dome, albeit less critical with a much reduced scale, we will see that its basic configuration offers a very good model for the dwellings described in this updated version of Avalon. Most visions of lunar and Mars settlement to date share a common notion of initial settlement based on the use of modular habitats –akin to the modules of space stations like the ISS– made on Earth and delivered whole to their destination as very elaborate soft landing craft with equally elaborate means of moving them around and linking them together into larger complexes. These are somehow assumed to transition to grand, spacious, and permanent habitats manufactured from local materials. There’s a very large gap in time and industrial capability between tin-can outposts and city-scale settlements made of advanced locally-produced materials and rarely have any visions of settlement given much thought to this transition. Indeed, it’s quite rare for these notions to even go beyond the tin-can outposts to consider larger habitats –as if structures so costly to import and with duty lives of mere decades could ever sustain permanent settlement. Even Savage seems to have glossed over this to some degree, the original TMP –perhaps for the sake of brevity–describing the initial lunar settlement as a ‘mining camp’ for a very rugged community of pioneers then going strait to the giant habitats, giving these early facilities no detail and offering no concepts for this very long and involved transition. In TMP2 we offer a more comprehensive vision of lunar and planetary colonization that is based on the simple premise that, in order to make this transition to large permanent settlements and eventual concerted colonization we much create a robust local industrial infrastructure. To accomplish that we must, over a protracted period of time, develop a succession of transitional habitats far larger, longer lasting, and adaptive than possible with prefabs shipped from Earth and build them utilizing the natural resources of these locations even in a very rudimentary, largely unprocessed, form and employing the simplest tools possible. Waves of Settlements There is a specific order to the exploration and colonization of new territories that tends to be overlooked in many space colonization schemes, perhaps because it has so often been obscured in the noise of terrestrial history and the political/cultural myth-crafting of nation-states. Four consecutive waves or campaigns of development, though they are not stepwise in the sense that one must complete before the other begins. Rather, they must each achieve a certain critical mass to enable the start of the next subsequent wave while continuing for some time thereafter and for some time amplified by the effect of the subsequent wave. Initial Exploration At first is the wave of initial exploration, which is generally more concerned with demonstrating the ability to reach a new location than doing anything particularly important there, and thus any outpost facilities created rely largely on imported materials and whole portable structures of a very temporary, rudimentary, often disposable nature. Missions rely primarily on a very limited cache of imported supplies transported along with these facilities. Because transportation in this stage has somewhat unpredictable results and the destination largely unknown, facilities tend to be designed for flexibility and self-sufficiency, comfort assuming a low priority in design thanks to the deliberately temporary nature of missions and their need to minimize on bulk for ease of transportation. Costs tend to be extremely high for this wave of exploration but of less concern because missions are temporary and relatively small in scale. Charting Expeditions The second wave of exploration is concerned with organized exploration or ‘assay’ of large expanses of a new territory and is based on the establishment of still rudimentary but more permanent outposts of more deliberate strategic location intended to facilitate, as staging points and the basis of an initial transportation infrastructure, a great many more practical, systematic, if still temporary, data gathering missions over a protracted period of time. There is still a high reliance on imported resources but also establishment of a certain degree of industrial capability intended to exploit the more easily utilized local resources as a means of leveraging the investment in exploration over many more missions than possible without some kind of local support infrastructure. The First Settlements Following after this, the first wave of true settlement is premised on initial ‘exploitation’; establishing industrial facilities and transportation for mass exploitation of the more accessible resources requiring a sustained population to maintain these facilities. Some exploration outposts become obsolete upon completion of assay within their reach and are abandoned if that assay resulted in no exploitable resources or, if resources are found, are converted into key nodes of a transportation infrastructure facilitating access to those resources. This is why some ‘frontier outposts’ of the New World evolved over time into towns or cities and others became footnotes in history. Permanent Communities A clear logistical boundary develops in this wave of development between those goods that can effectively be locally produced by this rudimentary industrial infrastructure and the more sophisticated goods that require the more sophisticated industry of the ‘home country’ to produce and must still be imported. Historically, the mass production of simple export commodities of low unit values has typically paid for the continued support of colonial settlements in the absence of the means to full self-sufficiency. New territory was typically considered ‘wilderness’ by the general culture and initial ‘settlers’ there often had little intention of staying and so pursued no more infrastructure than absolutely necessary to maintain resource exploitation with the greatest cost-efficiency. Later, as a colony began to establish a new and local community identity, a very deliberate attempt to suppress self-sufficiency was often pursued by authorities of a parent community in order to maintain dependency upon trade. How long this might be maintained tended to depend on the market values of the export commodities. Should that decline because of market changes or competitive colonial development, it would compel increasing local industrial sophistication in order to increase the unit value of exports, eventually leading to functional self-sufficiency and thus increasing tension between new and old communities over economic control. This, of course, is what precipitated most colonial revolutions of the past. It’s a myth that New World colonization was initiated with any intent to create new permanent communities. With the exception of religious fanatics like the Pilgrims, most ‘settlers’ were only there to make money then go ‘home’ to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Ultimate permanent settlement was ad hoc. Not until a local infrastructure emerged such that one could envision a standard of living and quality of life in the new territory equivalent to the best possible in the old home communities did colonist start thinking of it as a place to stay and enjoy the fruits of their labor right where they were. A Different Situation As we’ve discussed elsewhere in TMP2, space presents a radically different situation in the colonial context because the nature of the environment largely precludes any possibility of ‘profit’ through any kind of export save information transmitted by telecommunications –particularly from places as distant as Mars. The Moon and orbital locations are a bit better in this respect in that their overhead in transportation is much reduced thanks to a lack of gravity and atmosphere and so possibilities of some mass export do exist –at least between each other. But in general there really aren’t any commodities in space valuable enough to justify their export to Earth, and pay for a constant supply of goods import from it. Many futurists and space advocates have contrived economic basis for their development visions based on largely imaginary commodities and markets for them. The imagined future terrestrial fusion power market and its demand for tritium imported from the Moon is one of the more popular of these fanciful notions. But ultimately, and as we’ve noted repeatedly elsewhere, the potential profits in space can only be enjoyed there. The Moon and Mars will only be home to those rare incredibly imaginative –if not delusional– people who can look at images of desolate fossil worlds like Mars and envision some form of the Good Life. Our western ancestors often had a hard time with that even when looking at the verdant natural splendor of unspoiled terrestrial continents! Consequently, on places like the Moon or Mars this third wave of development would still only be seeking resource exploitation as a means to leveraging the ongoing expense of development with the specific intent of establishing progressive self-sufficiency rather than any export economy. This represents the chief critical economic challenge to space colonization. It demands a very protracted investment with a return on investment that can only be realized and enjoyed by the few people willing to go there to stay. Thus the impetus to pursue this must ultimately be social and cultural rather than economic. This, of course, is why Marshal Savage felt it necessary to cultivate a new culture for this purpose –a culture where accomplishing new and interesting things matters more than making money from them. This is also the chief reason why the First Space Age ended the way it did. It is easy to muster the support of societies for initial waves of exploration because these ‘missions’, these ‘feats’, aren’t about the places they go to. They are about demonstrating the prowess of an existing society and culture as a means of reinforcing the collective identity of that society or culture. When things get down to the real work of colonization, then that support disappears without an economic rationalization –unless there is a true cultural imperative for colonization that supersedes issues of cost. Space colonization is not the province of explorers, adventurers, warriors, conquerors, capitalists, industrialists, politicians, or even scientists. Space colonization is the province of artists who work in the medium of lifestyle. Understand this fact and the nature of the Second Space Age resolves clearly into context. Ultimate full-scale colonial settlement, the second wave of settlement development and the fourth wave of colonization, can be characterized by establishing the ability to support permanent habitation at a very high quality of life in the new territory –a ‘good life’ equal or superior to that of older communities. Given the relative inability anywhere in space to effectively support this through economic exchange with communities on Earth, this demands virtual self-sufficiency based entirely on local resources, or at least an independent extended resource infrastructure, and a complete local industrial infrastructure. Truth be told, it took centuries for New World colonization to actually reach this stage of development, precipitating the movements for colonial independence. Some have argued that America never even developed a truly American model of the Good Life until well into the 20th century. But then there was no concerted effort toward self-sufficiency in the New World as there must be in space. With little practical external trade possible, complete colonial self-sufficiency becomes the primary objective for development. Where large permanent colonies are established is partly predetermined by the architecture of transportation infrastructures established for resource exploitation, hence the historic tendency of key colonial transportation centers evolving into the major cities of later eras. However, we anticipate that in places like the Moon and Mars natural geography and geology will play a very critical role in site selection for large habitat structures because they will be so key to their physical architecture and so may produce more isolation between larger habitats and their key supporting sources of resources, relying more heavily on long distance high volume transportation technologies such as rail systems. Historic colonization had the benefit of an environment where human settlements of large scale might easily be established anywhere along a transportation infrastructure linking up key resource locations, thus their tendency to emerge at key nodes of intermodal exchange in the transportation infrastructure. In space, optimal locations to build large habitats and optimal locations to gather resources may often be separated by great distance, leaving some key transportation nodes as no more than transfer stations until more advanced technologies of habitat construction become available. Lunar and Mars habitats are often illustrated in close proximity to launch and landing facilities linking them to space and ‘home’ on Earth. This may be the case for early settlement. But in practice larger colonial habitats may be as remote from such facilities as major cities are from them on Earth because the respective logistics behind their choices of location may be very different –for example, a mass launcher requiring equatorial location while major habitats may require rock strata or soil compositions found only in more northern latitudes. This may result in a greater specialization of activity among some settlements. Clearly, the colonization of the Moon and Mars will require much more than a pair of hands and a good set of tools. With a long transition to industrial self-sufficiency and the complication of a return on investment only for those actually living there, a much more streamlined and economical approach to the earlier phases of colonization becomes necessary. Manned missions to the Moon and Mars as the basis of initial exploration are likely –not especially practical, of course, but as we’ve discussed this wave of colonization isn’t actually about colonization. The dividend in terms of nationalistic fervor for this activity is limited beyond the first glorious jaunt and nation-states aren’t usually in the business of creating places where people can go and not be taxed. So after the ticker tape parades, you either prove you can make money or you prove there’s potential in it as Big Science. The costs of manned space activity are so astronomical that it’s generally not possible to rationalize in terms of science. Budgets for terrestrial science projects even on the scale of the recent Large Hadron Collider are small compared to the budget for a manned mission to Mars. It’s thus highly unlikely that remotely-supported development activity in such places can be sustained indefinitely as manned activity. Aquarius development seeks to ameliorate this through cultural development –cultivating a community with a cultural imperative for space overriding economic incentive. But that too is a very protracted process and there are already a great many people aspiring toward lunar and Mars settlement today even in the midst of a dominant culture so primitive it can barely manage to prioritize issues of its own survival without it being tied to economic incentive –as if life itself is not worth it if someone isn’t making a profit on it. We’ve visited this same issue in the context of Asgard and the settlement of near-Earth orbital space and here with Avalon we propose much the same solution; telerobotics. Time is cheaper than manned space flight and the only practical advantage of the human worker/technician on site is a savings in time that generally isn’t cost-justified. There is no question about functional superiority of human anatomy –even if contemporary robotics it slowly eroding that superiority. That is not the point. Cost is. It takes the resources of super-power nation-states to support even ridiculously short-span manned jaunts to space. But a telerobotic outpost can potentially be within the means of a small business, science program, or interest group to operate indefinitely and, in the near future, may even become the province of the particularly affluent individual seeking a very unique hobby. Space settlement pursued like the best model train layout ever. The kind you can eventually retire to. And this is an approach where systems can be readily prototyped and realistically tested here on Earth at low cost. An entire telerobotic outpost could be readily demonstrated in many remote locations and the earlier forms of excavated human habitats the outpost would build easily mocked-up in a studio environment or in many existing mine complexes, such as the Kansas City Subtopolis. This offers potential for a vast assortment of practical and attention-grabbing activity commonly overlooked by the space advocacy community today. Thus with Avalon we arrive at the notion of a phase of unmanned telerobotic pre-settlement which basically dominates the first three waves of colonization and seeks to establish with the smallest possible external investment a complete and remote industrial infrastructure before any human beings make an attempt at permanent settlement. This does not at all preclude the early manned missions and the ticker tape parades –indeed, it can facilitate this, making them progressively easier and cheaper over time– but it doesn’t need them. They are ancillary to the actual objective of permanent colonial development. We will explore the full details of this strategy for initial development in subsequent sections. But given this approach, we can simply envision the three early phases of settlement thusly; •A first wave based on the deployment of remote viewing and small science oriented surface exploration vehicles –essentially already accomplished for the Moon and Mars by the efforts of national space agencies and likely to continue to be pursued in the future but with independent capability based on more economically practical system platforms needing to be demonstrated. Would also be concerned with the deployment of initial telecommunications and telemetry infrastructure based on lander and satellite systems dedicated to the purpose. •A second wave based on the deployment of ‘open environment’ outposts of modular components and a diverse fleet of robots whose main task is large area assay and the deployment of an initial large area telecommunications infrastructure. This would start with outpost locations initially designated by previous telecom and telemetry landers serving as guides to the incoming deployment of multipurpose ‘beachhead’ landing craft intended to establish facilities for the the organized recovery of incoming equipment by lower-cost ‘rough’ landing technology. Later, outposts would be established by mobile robots deploying open environment facilities near key resources and in locations designated for third wave outpost construction. *A third wave based on the creation of excavated habitats for the construction and sheltering of diversified large scale automated industry with the establishment of simple transportation systems based on automated trucks and light rail systems for the wide area gathering of resources. This industry would be focused on the goal of self-replication of the systems it is based on with the intent of increasing settlement reach and capability while continually decreasing the overhead of imported hardware from Earth. This wave may also begin the prefabrication of the first rudimentary human habitat structures as extensions of the excavated habitats created for machines and the pre-establishment of subsistence life support systems based on CELSS designs, which would ultimately radically reduce the cost of human transport to the colony by eliminating its need to carry vast quantities of supplies and equipment. Initial human habitation would be premised largely on the reduction in latency for control of settlement robotics, with a corresponding expansion in development pace and productivity. However, human habitation may not strictly be necessary in this phase. •A fourth wave based on the maximum scale deployment and utilization of this telerobotic infrastructure with the aid of local human control with the intent of large scale habitat development and the development of a local launch system production capability. Settlers once working as terrestrial-based or Earth-orbit-based telerobotic technicians can now reap the dividends on their investment in the colonies with the gigantic leverage of robotic exploitation and pre-fabrication of personal dwellings and facilities. Impetus for settlement becomes driven by the prospect of realizing specific lifestyle models in an environment where space and resources are –within reason– free for the taking by newcomers with some concerted plan of development. Settlements would still, of logistical and social necessity, be arcologies by design but the early potential volume of personal space, personally accessible resources, scale of facilities such as cultivated parkland, and potential for personal creative expression could be tremendous, comprising the key attractions to settlement. Here, then is a more practical lower-cost model of lunar and planetary settlement than is typical for concepts of the sort and one far more capable of being pursued by modest communities of aspiring settlers with the ready development of demonstration systems built on Earth and whose robotics and fabrication technology would have very immediate terrestrial markets –much more so than is typical for space agency ‘spin-offs’ and ‘commercial technology transfer’. This is not, however, a ‘fast track’ plan to settlement. Given contemporary technology, such telerobotic pre-settlement efforts could demand as much as a human generation to complete. However, as it becomes possible to increase the local or on-board intelligence of systems and early nanofabrication technology comes on-line, steadily increasing savings in time will become realized and the work of a generation will progressively shrink to the work of decades or years. In its ultimate form based on the advent of technology such as NanoFoam –as we will discuss further in the Solaria sections- this colonization strategy may become a personal hobby and the basis of a cybernetic exogenesis. Colonial Architecture: The defining aspect of living in space is life indoors. Human beings cannot exist in the ambient environment of any location in our solar system save that of the planet Earth. So to live in space means to live indoors in some fashion perpetually, only being able to partly experience the ambient environment wearing protective suits that, even with the advent of such things as the BioSuit (the mechanical counter-pressure space suit), will remain cumbersome and too inconvenient and hazardous for routine casual use. And yet a sense of some relationship between indoor spaces to a larger –presumably unlimited– outdoors remains important to the human psyche –and not merely for those with a tendency toward claustrophobia. Addressing this issue is the single greatest challenge to creating a comfortable habitat in space. However we come to define the ‘good life’ elsewhere in the solar system, it will have to be realized indoors with communities that are largely physically contiguous. This is particularly critical to life on the natural bodies in our solar system. Isolated to varying degrees by both distance, gravity wells, and –sadly, non-breathable- atmospheres that increase the overhead in surface-to-space transportation, a higher degree of reliance on local resources becomes necessary for both survival and comfort. And while very large enclosures are relatively easily implemented in a microgravity, even the low gravity of the Moon adds some complications to the construction of very large span structures. Curiously, while the Moon, Mars, and other such bodies in the solar system have long been the focus of attention for science fiction and actual space exploration, space visionaries of the late 20th century seem to have overlooked the prospect of their comprehensive settlement in favor of the notion of orbital settlement. There, it seemed, technology could more effectively control the total environment, making it possible to address the issue of comfortable indoor living by simple scale and the wholesale simulation of a terrestrial environment –what this author refers to as the notion of the Great Indoors; structures of such great size that their dimensions challenge the limits of human spatial perception to become a virtual outdoor space. Girard O’Neill’s famous orbital colony concepts typify this idea. But for the surfaces of natural bodies, and outside of science fiction, there has been little consideration of surface settlement architecture beyond many variations of the tin-can outposts envisioned by Werner von Braun and his colleagues, the similarly small and temporary inflatable structures, and the very grandiose notion of ‘terraforming’; making planets habitable by converting them whole into duplicates of the terrestrial environment. Only a few plausible mezzoscale (permanent village-scale settlement) habitat concepts seem to have ever been explored. In fact, only three come to mind for this author; a rather outrageous –though not entirely implausible– notion of creating spherical excavated habitats on the Moon by exploding neutron bombs below the surface, a few sensible but not much developed designs for permanent outpost structures based on stacked regolith bricks, and the surprisingly plausible notion of precast concrete and alloy domes buried in regolith presented in Ben Bova’s Welcome to Moonbase –a late 1980s work of speculative fiction written for the young-adults market. Clearly, this is an area of space architecture somewhat neglected. In TMP Marshal Savage explored another possible solution to the originally suggested in early 20th century science fiction; transparency. Proposing the use of domed and spherical transparent pneumatic hull systems using water as shielding and an algaeculture medium, he would visually integrate the ambient environment of space to the sheltered environment of the habitat in much the same way as any building employing large window-walls seeks to bring the feel of the outdoors inside. And this was also a solution for surface settlement, with domes of various sizes set in craters up to many kilometers in allowing for a kind of piecemeal terraforming of large sheltered areas. Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed previously, the technical feasibility of the water filled membrane hull concept remains undetermined and unlikely in the near-term. The EvoHab hull system we’ve proposed in the TMP 2.0 version of Asgard could be an alternative for surface habitats in the same way as it is for orbital habitats. But, early-on in the development of a surface colony its many components would all need to be imported. An efficient strategy would employ more use of local materials in simpler forms. However, in his descriptions of Avalon, his proposed colony for the Moon, Savage inadvertently hinted at another possibility. Avalon is unusual among the sections of the original TMP in that is it the only area of the book where he attempted to illustrate in any detail a personal dwelling; an individual lunar dome home based on a miniature version of his membrane hull set in a small lunar crater with a surrounding habitat structure excavated into the walls of the surrounding crater wall –essentially a miniature version of the far larger Avalon crater dome. He considered this far less efficient a dwelling than those of the very large domed habitat of Avalon. And yet, as impractical as this concept seemed to Savage, it hinted at a far more practical architecture for lunar habitats in general based on a slightly different approach; excavation alone. If we can set aside the somewhat fanciful notion of recycling and terraforming multi-kilometer-wide craters whole and consider earlier habitats of somewhat less ambitious dimensions, excavating them whole out of the strata of the Moon, Mars, or other natural bodies in the solar system becomes a straightforward strategy well suited to the use of telerobotics. This is the easiest way to use indigenous materials for permanent dwellings of scale; find rock outcroppings near desired strategic areas, possibly with natural chambers like lava tubes (which in the lowered gravity of the Moon and Mars might already be as wide as sports stadiums), and just use relatively simple robots operated from Earth or orbital settlements to carve our surface settlements whole from the natural rock like the ancient city of Petra without a single human needing set foot in the place until its safe and functional. No need for a ‘heroic phase’ of development as Savage put it. And the same basic form of domed discrete habitat structure Savage imagined would be well suited to this, providing a basic atrium/park centered form that can be freely replicated, variously scaled, and easily transitioned to later built-up structures of the exact same configuration but made of regolith-derived masonry using the very simple strategy of mound-formed vaults and domes –again, easy for relatively simple robots. We need only link these into a conjoined community and replace the fragile and difficult to realize transparent dome with a luminous artificial sky, borrowing some of the same techniques for that employed in the previously described EvoHab hull. Heliostat-driven fiber-optic lighting using large area holographic light diffuser panels of thin membranes would bring natural light into these structures, allow it to be seamlessly combined with artificial light, and allow for the creation of naturalistic sky-domes over large garden atrium spaces. This is also a very easy form of architecture to mock-up and research on Earth, albeit with much greater limits in structural span thanks to Earth’s higher gravity. Such habitats would be dominated by interior design, all based on retrofit structures surface-mounted to a bare monolithic superstructure of rock chambers or masonry vaults. We can demonstrate these habitats today, in existing mine structures like the Kansas City Subtopolis complex, in old warehouses, aircraft hangers, or the like. Since the rock or masonry superstructure is a monolithic whole largely hidden under internal retrofits, it doesn’t really matter for a simulation what is actually behind that retrofit structure as long as it supports the same kind of retrofit parts. Over time, and with the improving capability of local industrial infrastructure, we would arrive at a means of local mass parts production for constructing domes based on Asgard-style EvoHab hull systems of vast scale, and thus arrive at a means to incrementally transition from the smallest and simplest of excavated habitats to the vast Avalon colony envisioned by Savage. These domes might not be transparent, but it would make no difference from the inside where the virtual sky created with collected natural light combined with scale would be sufficient to establish a sense of an outdoor environment. Thus we arrive at a straightforward and quite plausible vision of lunar and planetary colonization that can be effectively replicated with slight variations in just about every location in the solar system. Peer Topics *Foundation *Aquarius *Bifrost *Asgard *Elysium *Solaria *Galactia *Transhumanism and TMP *Economics, Justice, and Government in TMP *Key Disruptive Technologies of the Post-Industrial Era Sub Topics *Life In Avalon *Telerobotic Outpost *Excavated Settlement *Excavated Colonies *Surface Shuttle Vehicles *Surface Transit Way-Station *Mass Launcher System *Lunar/Planetary Space Elevator Systems *Avalon Supporting Technologies Phases Category:Avalon Category:Phases